Saturday December 10, 2016

I can’t be the only one who is excited about the full OS experience on portables that finally have really great battery life, right? I wonder if Microsoft will release an ARM edition of the Surfaceآ—like, RT, but actually good?

This is full Windows 10 for PCs, not some stripped down version. It’s Windows 10 Home and Pro, on ARM. And Windows 10 Enterprise, with all the functionality that businesses expect, including domain join. This is Windows RT done right. Even better, Windows 10 on ARM will supply a long-rumored feature: The ability to run 32-bit Win32/x86 desktop applicationsآ—Apple iTunes, Adobe Photoshop, Google Chrome, whateverآ—directly on the system, unchanged. Two major technological changes have made this miracle possible. First, Qualcomm’s System on a Chip (Soc) designs have improved so dramatically in the past four years that their performance rivals that of mainstream Intel Core chipsets for PCs. And even better, Microsoft has developed an emulation technology that allows Win32 applications to launch and run unmodified on ARM-based PCs.